Search Results for: indict

Yoduk Story’s web site is still down. [Update: Brendan Brown reports no problems accessing the site from Korea, but I’m still not getting in from the U.S. Odd.] Meanwhile, pro-North Korean professor Kang Jeong-Koo (Remember him? He called the North Korean invasion of June 1950 a “War for Reunification” and General MacArthur a “war criminal”) has been suspended from giving lectures, not for reasons related to academic standards–the man teaches things that are demonstrably false–but because his views embarrassed the...

Not a very ambassadorial thing to say, perhaps, but there are plenty of reasons to justify Washington’s harder new line toward North Korea of late. Leave aside the decade-plus of North Korean cheating and defiance of any standards followed by the rest of humanity. Although evidence of a policy shift is still inconclusive, it’s arguable that several developments last fall strengthened the hand of hard-liners (me, for one) seeking the abandonment of negotiation from weakness in favor of the economic...

How did I miss this? I’d normally hang on every word of a Hitchens article about British cuisine; this time, he nails the human rights issue in North Korea, drawing unfavorable comparisons to history’s most infamous oppressions: To call a set of actions “genocidal,” as in the case of Darfur, is to invoke legal consequences that are entailed by the U.N.’s genocide convention, to which we are signatories. However, to call a country a slave state is to set another...

Finally, I can’t restrain my enthusiasm over this Korea Times column, which completely nails my own complaints about the Korean legal system. As someone who dealt regularly with the deficiencies that system on a regular basis while a JAG officer in Korea, its awfulness has been a favorite rant of mine since the early days of this blog (ht The Marmot). The context is the “Hong Kong Eleven,” a group of violent South Korean union thugs who went to Hong...

Tongsun Park–Arrested in Mexico? That certainly suggests a much higher level of U.S. interest in what he knows, as well as a much lower interest by Park in cooperating. Of course, he ratted everyone out after his Koreagate indictment. Let’s hope the pattern holds up. Update: . . . and on his way from Canada, home of Liberal Party supporter and Oil-For-Food co-suspect Maurice Strong, to God-knows-where, on the very eve of the Canadian national election. If this proves to...

Months after he was indicted by the feds in New York, oil-for-food bag man Tongsun Park has been arrested. Tongsun Park, a lobbyist from South Korea who was a central figure in the Congressional bribery scandal in the 1970’s known as Koreagate, was arrested yesterday in Houston on charges that he worked illegally to secure favorable treatment for Iraq under the United Nations oil-for-food program, federal authorities said. Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan, announced that Mr....

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstacy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic....

U.S. Ambassador to Korea Alexander Vershbow recently drew some shrill responses from North Korea and its friends in the South for calling the North a “criminal regime” when commenting on the latter’s counterfeiting of U.S. currency. The ambassador may create a degree of discomfort in the South Korean government, but he’s certainly doing a far better job of carrying the American message than his predecessors. In the process, he’s won some fans, and not just on this blog. All emphasis...